HAPPY HALLOWEEN

At least these aren't photoshopped.

US Economy can't get no respect

GDP has grown at more than 3% for ten quarters now. That hasn't happened in twenty years. BizzyBlog has more on this. Polls show that Americans still think our economy is in bad shape. Which is the illusion? Is it the economic numbers as reported by the Department of Labor, or is it the picture portrayed by the talking heads on our TV sets?

Iranian Econonics

Iran's President Ahmadinejad has an interesting solution to the "rapidly deteriorating situation at the Tehran Stock Exchange:"

Frustrated with the inability of his economic advisers and experts to come up with any solution, Ahmadinejad told them that the only way out of the current stock exchange and financial market problems was to “frighten” speculators by hanging two or three of them.

I had to laugh when I read this article. I guess Ahmadinejad thinks taking risk is bad, but if he starts killing people for taking risk (i.e., taking speculative positions in the stock market), investment will dry up fast. Sounds like a sure-fire recipe for a market-crash to me. If I were a floor-trader at the Tehran Stock Exchange, I'd resign. Fast.

People might not revolt when their rights and freedoms are restricted, but they will revolt when they cannot feed their families due to self inflicted economic collapse.

All the News that Fits to Print

The NYT is more informative for what it leaves out than for what it puts in.

I hate to say, "I told you so"

Today, President Bush said:

"It is clear that Senators would not be satisfied until they gained access to internal documents concerning advice provided during [Harriet Miers'] tenure at the White House - disclosures that would undermine a President's ability to receive candid counsel."

And it is equally clear, at least to me, that Bush thought long and hard about this very issue before before the Miers nomination was made in the first place. Two words: Poker. Player.

USA Today photoshops Condi to make her look demonic

Check it out. The eyes are photoshopped.

So much for ethics in journalism. It is obviously doctored and Michelle Malkin proves it.

Here's the letter I sent to USA Today in response:

Date: Wed, 26 Oct 2005 09:44:41 -0700 (PDT)
From: "DW"
Subject: Ethics in journalism or lack thereof
To: rcurtis@usatoday.com
CC: editor@usatoday.com

Dear Richard,

Why did you photoshop a picture of Condi Rice to make
her look satanic?
The USA Today article with the picture I'm looking at
is at
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2005-10-19-rice-congress_x.htm

You must think your readers are complete morons not to
notice this, and the obvious intent.

Get a real job. My daughter can photoshop better than you,
and she's in gradeschool. Tell me why I should believe
anything you people publish.

Cheers,
D. W.
California

The 'editor' actually sent a return email saying the letter would be considered for the 'letters to the editor' section. *LAUGH*

UPDATE: Yay! Nasty letters do work! USA Today has replaced the offending photo with the non-photoshopped version.

Too good not to post

From James Taranto:

The Washington Post reports on a New Yorker interview with Brent Scowcroft, who served as national security adviser in the Ford and Bush père White Houses:

Scowcroft, in his interview, discussed an argument over Iraq he had two years ago with Condoleezza Rice, then-national security adviser and current secretary of state. "She says we're going to democratize Iraq, and I said, 'Condi, you're not going to democratize Iraq,' and she said, 'You know, you're just stuck in the old days,' and she comes back to this thing that we've tolerated an autocratic Middle East for fifty years and so on and so forth," he said. The article stated that with a "barely perceptible note of satisfaction," Scowcroft added: "But we've had fifty years of peace."

Now let's see. Between 1953 and 2003, here are the Mideast wars we can think of off the top of our head: the Six Day War, the Yom Kippur War, the Iran-Iraq War, the Gulf War, the two Palestinian intifadas against Israel, the Algerian Civil War, the Yemen Civil War and two Sudanese civil wars. That doesn't even count acts of terror against non-Mideastern countries, from the Iranian invasion of the U.S. Embassy to the attacks of 9/11.

What do you call someone who describes this as "50 years of peace"? A "realist."

Won't hear about this on CNN

From AP:

The Sept. 20 attack in the mostly Sunni Arab town of Duluiyah, about 45 miles north of Baghdad, was reported for the first time on Saturday by the British newspaper The Daily Telegraph and confirmed by the military on Sunday.
...
The Telegraph reported the contractors killed and wounded were employees of the Halliburton Co. subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root, the biggest U.S. military contractor in Iraq. But Goldenberg could not confirm that.

The Telegraph reported that two of the contractors not killed in the initial attack were dragged alive from their vehicle, which had been badly shot up. They were forced to kneel in the road before being killed.

"Killing one of the men with a rifle round fired into the back of his head, they doused the other with petrol and set him alight," the paper reported.

"Barefoot children, yelping in delight, piled straw on to the screaming man's body to stoke the flames."

The crowd then "dragged their corpses through the street, chanting anti-U.S. slogans," the report said.

I'm gonna have a hard time forgetting this one. You know why you won't hear about this on CNN or the other "mainstream" news networks? It's because, though violence sells, if they can't put an anti-American face on it, or if it dehumanizes those we're fighting against, they just won't report it. Go ahead - prove me wrong.

The Miers nomination

This has got to be a spoof. Whoever is writing for "Harriet Miers's Blog" would get a C in college English. Talk about weak! My daughter can write better, and she's in grade school. If Miers is confirmed, she will be writing opinions that will shape law and be taught in law schools across the country for decades to come.

Ann Coulter, in a particularly good piece, explains why the Miers nomination is bad for our respresentative democracy and makes lawmaking by our "judicial theocracy" more likely rather than less. As far as I can tell though, nobody is thinking in a "Rovian" way - could there actually be a method to this madness? Assuming Bush is a smart guy and a crafty executive, why would he have nominated Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court?

Could it be that Bush's intent with Miers' nomination is to "be a uniter not a divider" - to get republicans and democrats to finally set aside their partisanship and all vote the same way (which they haven't done on anything of consequence since they authorized the Iraq War)? The entire Senate should vote NO on Miers. I suppose the Democrats might support her in the belief that a weak conservative would be preferable to a strong constitutionalist on the Supreme Court. Don't forget also that Harry Reid actually praised the Miers pick right after it was announced. Reid is the leader of the demonrat senators, and Bush did vet his candidates for the position with senators. Presumable, Miers was either approved by Reid or was on a list of potential nominees that was approved by Reid as acting as the Senate Minority Leader.

"But she'd vote to overturn Roe" you say? So what? Granted, the confirmation hearings for Roberts were mostly about "upholding a woman's right to choose" for the democrats, making them look like a single issue party, but they knew he would be confirmed and were just putting on a show for their base. I'm surrounded by lefties at work and I'm telling you that all they really care about is getting back in power - they believe that if Roe were overturned there would be a popular backlash that would sweep them back into power. So I guess at least the Miers nomination might force the dems to take off the mask for a minute. Oh, and their strategy has shifted recently -- instead of blaming everything bad in the world on Bush, they are now blaming everything on "those *insert derogatory adjective here* republicans." See if you can notice it in the MSM, their propaganda arm.

But still, even if the Miers nomination is a set-up, why duck a fight? Why the deception? Why look stupid? Why couldn't Bush just nominate a Janice Rogers Brown or Priscilla Owen or Miguel Estrada or J. Michael Luttig or Edith Jones or Karen Williams or Michael McConnell? There are so many great picks to choose from. If not a judge but just a really good female lawyer who can write well, then why not Ann Coulter - like Harriet she is a good lawyer, but a much better writer than Miers, and we KNOW how Ann would vote on key issues. Instead we get an unknown commodity and we're just supposed to trust Bush because she's his friend and he's known her for a long time? Yeah right, like we were supposed to believe that he had looked deep into Putin's soul and found a good man and strong ally. Russia has been stabbing us in the back at almost every turn since Putin became its president.

To those who say, "To hell with the Supreme Court," I say this is really, really important! From Roe to Kelo, our Constitution and Bill of Rights have been getting shedded. If we continue to allow our courts to usurp legislative powers, we will soon lose the liberties and rights we take for granted. As a Justice of the Supreme Court, Miers' lack of expertise in Constitutional law and general mediocrity in expressing her opinion will hurt us for decades or centuries. Her opinions, as recorded opinions of the court, will serve as the basis for future rulings; sloppy writing or unsound reasoning, anything not firmly grounded in the US Constitution (not Belgium's) will cause more Roes and more Kelos - more "let's make it up as we go along" style judicial meddling. I don't want our country to become another haven for socialism. Tolerating more socialism would be almost as bad as accepting Sharia law, so yeah - I'd put this right up there with the GWOT.

And those people who say that criticizing Miers' qualifications is "sexist" are just patronizing women. If it has to be a woman, why such a mediocre nominee? Couldn't find anyone better? With a proven track record? She has no background in constitutional law whatsoever, and she's never been a county, state or federal judge. Picking Miers is like the Washington Redskins picking Tiger Woods with their first round draft pick - he's very talented and might even turn out to be a decent football player if he works hard, but he hasn't played football previously and it is unlikely he would be a great player. Could you imagine the outrage from Redskins fans if the team's owners selected Tiger with their first round pick and justified it by saying he was the best black athlete they could find? DC would look like Toledo only worse.

Up to now I've been a pretty strong supporter of Bush, but this Miers nomination just makes Bush look like what the DU asshats and Kos kids have been saying about him for years: that he likes his cronies and rewards his friends with positions in high places, that he surrounds himself with people who agree with everything he says, that he is dumb, and (this is the big one) that he is dishonest. Granted, Bush won't be running for reelection again, and republicans voting against his nominee would show voters that they have principles and standards, and that they are not a rubber stamp for the President, but the cost just seems too high. Up to now I had thought that Bush was one of the smartest and most honest politicians we've ever had, but now I am forced to choose between dumb and honest, or very smart but dishonest. For now I'm thinking smart but dishonest in a poker player's sort of way.

So, to sum up, I guess I'm putting forward a conspiracy theory that if reduced to bare bones would be: What if Bush actually wants the Miers nomination to be rejected by the Senate? For that to happen the conservative base would have to tell their Senators to vote "no." It could happen. If Miers were defeated by the "right," or a coalition from both the left and the right, that would make it much easier to nominate someone like Janice Rogers Brown for the Supreme Court, and if the democrats filibuster, no one could blame the republicans for using the nuclear option. It's a theory, and it has flaws, but Bush had to know that this nomination would split the conservative base.

I just can't help wondering whether we've become so used to liberals constantly blaming Bush for everything, so used to lefties claiming failure no matter what the outcome of any decision made by "this administration," that we defend Bush no matter what. Why aren't the lefties attacking Miers like they did Roberts? If they are happy with the pick, I'm not happy. LiberalLooneyLefties have been constantly denouncing George W. for not having godlike powers to stop hurricanes or land Air Force One on the Superdome and part the waters of Lake New Orleans like Moses, for not preventing 9/11, for not making gas prices lower, for not having better information than all of the intelligence agencies of the Western European countries as well as our own CIA, etc, etc. Well, guess what? He's human. George W. does what he thinks is the right thing to do, and I like that about him, it's why he is trusted, but he can be wrong and saying so is not disloyalty. Saying Bush was wrong about everything is just deranged, BDS is a suicide cult, but I'm at least willing to consider the possibility that Bush could be wrong about this.

P.S.: Sorry I've been gone so long. My job has kept me extra busy lately.

News you won't see on TV that you should be aware of

First, we have a massive inflow of arms and fighters infiltrating Lebanon from Syria, which should not surprise anybody - after all, Assad did say that "Lebanon would burn" if he was forced out, and he was forced out through democratic elections in Lebanon.

Another item you probaly have not have heard about:

In an apparent major breakthrough, scientists in Korea report using umbilical cord blood stem cells to restore feeling and mobility to a spinal-cord injury patient.

The research, published in the peer-reviewed journal Cythotherapy, centered on a woman who had been a paraplegic 19 years due to an accident.

After an infusion of umbilical cord blood stem cells, stunning results were recorded:

“The patient could move her hips and feel her hip skin on day 15 after transplantation. On day 25 after transplantation her feet responded to stimulation.”

If embryonic stemcell research were yielding such a breakthrough, it'd be on the front page of every newspaper, but since it is non-embryonic stem-cell research, the MSM doesn't care. Doesn't fit the narrative. Can't bash the Chimp with it, so they burry it. Move along, nothing to see here. (Wait! I thought paralysis could not be cured. Nerves do not regenerate we were told. This story is freaking huge!)

From Mary Mapes' new book

"I had a real physical reaction as I read the angry online accounts. It was something between a panic attack, a heart attack, and a nervous breakdown. My palms were sweaty; I gulped and tried to breathe. . . . The little girl in me wanted to crouch and hide behind the door and cry my eyes out."

Funny, funny stuff! Ms. Mapes missed her calling! You can read more of her wit here. She and Dan still think that basing a story on forged documents is good journalism, and they literally are crying about having gotten caught. What a loon. (They would have gotten away with it too, if it weren't for those meddling kids in their pajamas!)

UPDATE: Charles demonstrates why Ms. Mapes is either deranged, or she thinks the people reading her book are complete morons.

Here's an Idea

Regarding the nomination of Miers to the Supreme Court -- it ain't over yet. John Hawkins has an idea about how things might go (so crazy it just might work - Rovian you might say). Another alternative would be for the Republican majority in the Senate to just vote 'no' on Miers. I'm still hoping that Janice Rogers Brown ends up with the nomination, but I'd be happy with Edith Hollan Jones or J. Michael Luttig. I would definately prefer Judge Brown though. A very public battle between Republicans and Demonrats over Janice Rogers Brown (a strict constitutionalist with sterling credentials who also happens to be a black woman) would be the worst thing to happen to the Democrat party since the Emancipation Proclamation.

Better Dead than Red

Well, the Russians can't seem to agree about what to do with Lenin's body, which has been on display in a glass box for about 80 years now. Frank J. thinks it should be sold on eBay - Russia needs the money. Now that's thinking outside the box.

What Media Bias part 3,977

Well, we already knew that the San Francisco Chronicle is biased, but this is pretty blatant.